


Wylie Time

by Gayle H (HowNovel)



Category: Quantum Leap, Starman (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1994-11-07
Updated: 1994-11-07
Packaged: 2017-10-25 19:09:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/273741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HowNovel/pseuds/Gayle%20H





	Wylie Time

WYLIE TIME  
A Story by Gayle  
Copyright 1994 Reprinted from STARCROSSED, edited by Bruce

As soon as Sam's eyes recovered their ability to focus, he began to take in his surroundings. Gray, unadorned walls. Doors with electronic locks. Video cameras on both ends of the hall. Sam had never felt comfortable in government security installations before, but now the familiarity of it seemed a bit comforting. He had experience with government security personnel; perhaps this time it wouldn't be too difficult to bluff his way through the situations he would find himself in.

Of course, right _now_ his situation was uncomfortable. The restroom door was at his back -- but into which room was he supposed to be headed? And how to get in, past the doors with their coded electronic locks? If he didn't know a code sequence or a password he was supposed to know well, government security people could get quite paranoid, as Sam knew from experience. There were always stories circulating around security circles about these cloning factories in Russia that could turn out exact duplicates of your own grandmother, boss, partner, even your most trusted dog. If someone turned up not knowing what they were supposed to know --

"Al," Sam whispered under his breath, but too softly for Al to hear -- there were surely microphones as well as video cameras recording everything that went on in this building. "Oh, boy," he said aloud, despairingly.

To his mixed relief and shock, Al materialized at that moment. "Hiya, Sam," he said cheerily. "Wow, this place looks like home away from home! How many hours have I spent at places like this, security agencies... military, civilian. They always give me the creeps, though. There are some real paranoid wackos involved in intelligence work. Some okay guys, too. But, I'll tell ya, some of 'em make ya wonder why they call it `intelligence.'" Al tapped his temple with his forefinger.

"Al," Sam hissed. Without moving his head, he jerked his eyes sideways toward the security cameras.

"Okay, okay," Al said. "Ummm... Ziggy says your name is Ben Wylie. You are an assistant to Special Agent George Fox of the Federal Security Agency. That's here. Hey, the FSA's a real secret bunch, Sam. This Wylie has to be a really sharp guy to be working here. Ziggy says the reason you're here is... they're holding a civilian captive here, for secret interrogation. You helped to capture him, you and your boss. Now you have to help him get away."

Get away? Sam thought, looking at the windowless walls, the electronic locks, the security doors. Out of _here?_

At that moment, one of the doors in the hall Sam was facing swung open, and a short man rushed out impatiently. "Wylie, for heaven's sake, what are you standing out here for? Get back in here. I need you to monitor the subject while we get the galvanic skin response monitors set up." He smiled at Sam and slapped him on the back. "Don't worry, Wylie. Everything is great."

"Yes, sir, Mr...."

"Fox," supplied Al.

"... Fox," said Sam as he followed the short man back into the room from which he'd come.

Inside the room, several technicians in white coats were standing over a hospital-gowned, prone figure strapped to a gurney, his shaved head and bared chest covered with electrode wires. "I'm not sure whether the normal doses of Pentothal would be enough for this subject, or too much," one of the technicians was saying to Fox. "Dr. Rios says he seems oversensitive to some chemical stimuli, and unaffected by others."

"The important thing is, don't damage it. Don't risk any damage," Fox said tensely.

Don't damage _what?_ Sam thought, looking at the electronic monitors.

"Don't worry," the technician said. "Dr. Rios isn't taking any chances. She was saying this morning that she would rather take her time and have the subject around as long as possible."

The figure on the gurney turned his large, gentle eyes toward Sam. They were such gentle eyes that something in Sam seemed to shout, No! This isn't right! Those eyes looked at Sam with much sadness and pain, but not a hint of fear, nor of anger. Not even anger toward Sam, who -- as Agent Wylie -- had, according to Al, helped to capture him.

"Sam!" breathed Al, at Sam's side. "Sam! He sees me!"

"That's impossible!" Sam responded.

"What's impossible, Wylie?" demanded Fox.

"I... It's.. it's impossible that the patient should have EEG readings like that..." Fox was giving him a strange look, "... I mean, with Pentothal Sodium in him he couldn't..."

"Wylie, what are you talking about? Since when have you known anything about EEGs?"

"When have you ever _asked_ me about EEGs?" Sam responded, hoping that Fox never _had_ asked his assistant about them.

"Well, Wylie, I think that Dr. Rios ought to know her business, don't you? She's one of the most respected neurophysiologists in North America. And, anyway, it hasn't been given any Pentothal. We're still testing its tolerance levels. We have to be very careful since we're dealing with a lot of unknowns here. Don't worry," Fox said expansively, "everything's great. You did a fine job."

"Sam, I tell you, he does see me!" Al insisted.

Sam looked at the man on the table. The man nodded.

"You see, Sam!? And he hears me, too!"

"I hear you," the man on the table said with gentle sadness.

"Mr. Fox, sir, could I be excused to go to the restroom?"

"Again?" Fox waved his hand. "Go, Wylie. Go."

Gratefully, Sam ran out the door and down the hall. He ran into the restroom and hopped impatiently from one foot to the other until Al appeared a few seconds later.

"Okay, Al, tell me. Who is this guy? What's he done? And how can he see you, if he really can?"

"Look around, Sam," Al said, gesturing. Sam looked up and saw a video camera . He rushed into a stall. Surely they wouldn't have video surveillance in the stalls! They didn't. What a relief. He lifted his feet up onto the toilet seat to make standing room for Al as Al walked through the door -- as only _he_ could walk through a door.

"Okay, Al, what's the story here?"

"First of all, there may not be cameras in here, but there are probably microphones." Sam acknowledged Al's statement with a silent shrug. "So, don't talk. I'll tell you what I've got. Subject's name is Paul Forrester. A photojournalist. Won a Pulitzer for photographs he took in Cambodia... I think I've heard of this guy, Sam. He covered the war in Nam -- those photos really caught what things were like. There was this photo spread in LIFE of the returning soldiers -- I still have that magazine, even though it is more'n twenty years old. When I look at those soldiers, I can see the faces of my buddies. He's being held for... hmmm, Ziggy can't get that information. It seems to be highly classified. Must have something to do with -- well, this guy probably goes everywhere in the world that there's a hot spot. You know people like him -- they'll go anywhere or do anything for a picture. Remember that lady photojournalist who got herself killed in Nam going after her Pulitzer? He mighta cozied up to someone in order to get in somewhere to get pictures no one else could get. Maybe buddied-up with some terrorist in order to get some exclusive photos of a homemade bomb factory. That's my guess -- he linked up with somebody Uncle Sam doesn't like, and now Uncle Sam figures he's got information he'd better spit out. Of course, holding a citizen this way is completely illegal, so that's why things like this are done at secret facilities like this."

Sam nodded. He pondered the information as he opened the stall door -- then he ran back in and flushed the toilet for the microphones' benefit. Surely Forrester would be let go if he told the agents what they wanted to know. On the other hand, Sam knew that those federal security agents had, in the past, targeted groups and movements that Sam would consider to be good guys. The trade union movement, the civil rights movement, the black militant groups of the sixties, the antiwar activists, the Native American struggle for self-determination -- they had all at one time or another been persecuted -- not just spied on, but actively persecuted -- by federal agencies in the name of "national security." If Forrester was holding back information that the Feds wanted so badly, it might be a matter of principle to him. He might be sacrificing himself to avoid betraying an important cause, or at least something that he saw as an important cause.

But Sam had to admit that the interrogation methods were strange -- at least, what he had seen of them. In Sam's experience, interrogations were something like psychological duels -- thrust and parry and dodge. But the FSA agents here were treating Forrester more as though he were an experimental subject than a suspect being interrogated. They barely seemed to acknowledge him as a person as they did their tests. In fact, Fox often referred to Forrester as "it" -- a usage that Sam found strange, distasteful, offensive. Perhaps that was a psychological pressure tactic being put on Forrester; perhaps they felt that by dehumanizing him they could break down his resistance.

Sam walked down to the door to the room where Forrester was being held. Or was this the right door? They all looked alike. They weren't numbered, just plain gray doors. It was the third door on the left, wasn't it, that Fox had come out of, the first time that Sam had found himself in this hall?

Sam pressed his ear against that door. He thought he could hear something inside, but... The doors must have been soundproofed.

Suddenly he noticed the glass eye of the video camera staring at him from the corner of the hall, and jerked away from the door with a start. Oh, God, how suspicious must that look? What was the door combination Al had given him? The date. What was the date? May something. Hesitantly, Sam pressed button 5. Now... what was today again? May what?

Then the door swung open and an exiting Fox collided with Sam. "Oh, Wylie, there you are," he said. "I was just going to look for you. We're going to lunch. Watch the subject from now until one o'clock. It's heavily sedated, and it's under restraints, so it shouldn't give you any trouble. See you at one on the dot."

With a smile of exhausted satisfaction, like that of a man who has survived some impossible ordeal by sheer determination, Fox walked down the hall accompanied by three technicians.

"Yes, sir, Mr. Fox," Sam said to Fox's back. He was going to be alone with the prisoner! That was a start... Maybe he could figure out a way to figure him out.

The steel door closed with a muffled boom as Sam stepped into the room. Sam saw a silent, motionless figure in a white gown, lying face up on a gurney with his eyes closed. The figure's wrists were secured to the gurney by leather straps. An IV was in each arm. Electrodes were attached to his chest, his arms, his forehead, and his shaved skull. Blood pressure monitors were attached to one of his upper arms, giving a constant reading on both a digital monitor and graph paper. Beneath the snow-white sheet that covered his lower body, Sam could recognize the outlines of a catheter. It was a situation that no human being should be in, Sam thought with a sick feeling. Compared to this, it would be paradise to be a prisoner in a cell, where one could at least walk around.

The man opened his eyes. He looked at Sam from head to toe, and then looked into Sam's eyes. Sam saw sadness and despair, but, beyond that, he saw a love that was deeper and much more enduring than sadness. There was pain there, and despair, and a wrenching sense of separation, but there was something else, too. There was peace.

The man on the gurney opened his mouth. For a few seconds his lips moved without making a sound. Then, in a weak whisper, as though he were making an effort to remember how his speaking apparatus worked, the man asked, "Who are you?"

"I'm Agent Wylie, of course," Sam said. "You know me."

"No," the man whispered with an effort at shaking his head.

Was the man delusional? Or was it possible that the drugs he had been given enabled him to see through the "aura" that caused most people to see the characters they expected to see when they looked at Sam? I wonder if he thinks that I am impersonating Wylie in order to fool him or disorient him somehow, Sam thought.

"You're not one of them," whispered Forrester. "They think you're Wylie. You've taken Wylie's place. You aren't one of them... have you come to rescue me?"

"You're hallucinating! You're hallucinating!" Sam said loudly, looking about in panic at the four video cameras around them.

Forrester closed his eyes. His head sank deeply into his thin pillow and he seemed to surrender to the effects of the sedatives.

He lay quiet and unmoving. The only sounds in the room were the muted beeps of the electrocardiograph and the steady hum of an electric wall clock. Sam watched the rhythmic dance of the electrocardiograph until he was unaware of the passage of time or of the gray walls around him.

The clock read exactly one o'clock, minus ten seconds, when the door clicked open and Agent Fox stepped through it. He looked at the prone figure on the gurney and a soft, baby-like smile came upon his face. "Go to lunch, Wylie," Fox said, but it didn't sound like an order -- it sounded, Sam thought, as though Fox were so much in the habit of giving orders that he didn't know how to sound any other way.

"Mr. Fox, sir," Sam said.

"Yes, Wylie, what?"

"Sir, the subject began exhibiting unusual behavior at approximately 12:06 p.m. It lasted until approximately 12:09 p.m."

Fox gave Sam an odd look. "Yes, go on. Tell me."

"He started to speak, sir. He attempted to articulate something..." Fox was looking at him sharply. "It was largely unintelligible, sir. He did ask me if I had come to rescue him. I believe that he was hallucinating..."

"Don't worry about it. The mikes probably picked it all up." Fox moved over toward the still figure on the gurney. "Dr. Rios is going to try a new experimental psychogenic drug on him that may give better results than Pentothal. It's supposed to encourage him to talk in his sleep, and to let us talk to him when he's asleep, so we can find out what he's dreaming. Dr. Rios has pioneered the technique of dream interrogation. Supposed to be based on some Tibetan thing she studied. Doesn't make any sense to me, but she says that it's the best way to get past the `humanized' layer of his mind into the real stuff."

The white-sheeted figure on the gurney looked so still and helpless. Sam remembered what he had felt when those large, peaceful eyes met his, and he wondered just what kind of dreams this man did have, what kind of secrets gave those eyes their mysterious, compelling depths. Part of Sam did leap with curiosity to know, but it was wrong to rip a person's psyche apart with drugs to expose those secrets to this harsh light. A image came into Sam's mind of a beautiful mountain blown to rubble to make the minerals accessible, and another image came into his mind of deep-sea creatures who explode and die when brought up to the water's surface. Whatever was happening here, whoever this Forrester was, something special was being torn apart and violated.

And Sam felt helpless to stop it. "Isn't... isn't that dangerous, Mr. Fox?" he said desperately. "He... he's already on sedatives."

"Well, of course we're not going to administer this drug _now_ , while it's on sedatives too. We're going to be very careful. We know this drug is experimental and we know that its reactions are different from human reactions. Dr. Rios is being very careful. She's gathering data at every step. Every brainwave, every heartbeat, every change in blood pressure or galvanic skin response is being recorded and fed instantly into the computer. We are going to know a lot by the time we catch the boy."

"The... boy?"

"The boy is Forrester's son. Name is Scott Hayden," boomed Al's voice behind them. "Hayden was his mother's name, she and Forrester weren't married. Mother's whereabouts presently unknown. He was born in 1972, in Wisconsin... Hmmm, this doesn't quite make sense. During most of 1971 and 1972, Forrester was in Indochina -- that's when he took the Cambodian refugee photos that won him the Pulitzer Prize. Oh, well, love will find a way. Anyway, this boy apparently must have gotten mixed up in the same thing as his father. The FSA wants _him_ , too... And, get this, Sam -- the boy is here in D.C. right now! Forrester was captured in Vancouver, Washington, but the boy got away. But he musta figured they'd bring his father here. So he came to D.C.!"

"Alone?" Sam felt his heart wrench at what the boy must have been feeling to make him fly right into the heart of danger, right into the lion's den, with the futile hope of setting his father free.

"Alone what?" said Fox.

"I... was asking if you were going to try to capture the boy alone?"

"Of course not, Wylie, you're going to help me! Just like when we caught Forrester. You're a great assistant. I've recommended you for a raise."

"Ummm... thank you, sir."

"We're not alone anymore, Wylie. They're not calling it `Fox's Folly' anymore. The agency's going to make the boy's capture a priority. It's just a matter of time."

"I have to say this Wylie's pretty lucky," said Al, "to have such a cheerful and friendly boss. Some security agents I've known... well, they wouldn't be too pleasant to work under, believe me. Anyway, Ziggy says the boy's _not_ here alone. Says he's here with a woman -- her name's Liz Baines. Resident of Chicago, Illinois, born February 6, 1949, in Council Bluffs, Iowa, married twice, no children, longtime associate of Forrester. She flew in from Chicago the same day the boy arrived from the Northwest. My guess is that she paid for the boy's plane ticket, and that she's picking up the tab in the hotel where they are staying. They're in a motel called The Senator's Hideaway. Just kidding. They're at a place called The Bald Eagle, staying under the names Ishtar Warren and Roger Esposito. Guess they thought `Smith' would attract too much attention. You get off work at five, Sam, so you can go see them then."

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sam found the address of The Bald Eagle in the phone book. He had no idea which car in the huge FSA parking garage was Wylie's, so he took a cab over to The Bald Eagle. It was a modest, rather rundown hotel, but it was easy to spot, its name superimposed on a huge, monochrome painting that seemed to have been copied from the back of a quarter.

The desk clerk confirmed that a Roger Esposito and an Ishtar Warren were registered, staying in a two-room suite.

"Would you like me to call their room for you, sir?"

Sam suddenly wished that he had phoned them before coming to the hotel. They very likely knew what Agent Wylie looked like, and they probably knew that he had participated in Forrester's capture. One look at his face, and Sam would have a very hard time convincing them that "Wylie" was on their side.

"Shall I call up to them, sir?" the desk clerk asked again.

"Um, just dial the room number and let me talk to them," said Sam, as his mind raced. What can I say? I don't even know anything about why Forrester is being held, or what can be done, or what Baines's role in this is... although he could guess the nature of her relationship with Forrester.

The desk clerk placed the receiver in Sam's hand, and Sam stared helplessly as tiny ringing tinkled from it. Don't be there, please don't be there, Sam's mind pleaded. After three rings, Sam was about to hand the receiver back to the desk clerk in relief, and then a woman's voice said, "Hello?"

Sam slowly lifted the receiver to his ear. "Ah... hello?" There was a moment of silence as Sam tried to think of what else to say.

"Who is this?"

"Um..." He couldn't introduce himself as Agent Wylie of the FSA! But he couldn't introduce himself as Sam Beckett, either. And he couldn't think of any other introduction that would get him anywhere. "I'm... a friend."

"A friend."

"Yes, ma'am. I'm... a friend of..." Should he say he was a friend of Paul Forrester's? But he could hardly pull that off. He knew next to nothing about Forrester, save what was in the public record. "I have information about... about something that might concern you." "Like what?" The suspicion in the woman's voice seemed to increase, and just at that moment Sam noticed the funny look from the desk clerk.

"Um... I'm sorry, ma'am, sorry I bothered you." Sam handed the phone back to the desk clerk, who gave him a suspicious glance as he put the phone back into its cradle.

What could he do? What could he say to them? Sam decided that he should just go home and think. He hoped that he lived alone.

He hailed a cab and instructed the driver to take him to the address on Wylie's driver's license.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wylie's home proved to be a small, neat studio apartment in the heart of Washington. On the coffee table was a small stack of comic books -- SUPERMAN and other titles. There was also a copy of the latest WEEKLY WORLD NEWS. The cover headline read, "Titanic Survivor Found on Iceberg." Just what he needed to get his mind off his problems -- nothing could be further removed from federal security operations in Washington, D.C.

Sam opened the paper and read the first few pages -- a story about a goose who saved a woman from drowning and another about a man who was kept chained in the attic for twenty years by his wife. The latter story was an uncomfortable reminder of Forrester, strapped down maybe forever in a windowless room. Sam turned another page. An article had been clipped neatly from the facing page. Sam wondered what the article was, what it contained that had interested Agent Wylie enough to save it. Then it occurred to Sam that the apartment could contain clues, if not to the mystery of Forrester, then at least to what Agent Wylie was like and how better to impersonate him.

There were a few books on the shelves: some murder mysteries and a hardcover book entitled HOW TO HANDLE A DIFFICULT BOSS. Next to the bookshelf, Sam noticed a two-drawer filing cabinet. He opened the top drawer. There were only a few files in it.

Sam pulled one file out and examined it. All of the contents were clippings, taken mostly from tabloids, all about UFO sightings.

Sam picked up another file. This one contained clippings about crashed spacecraft and captured aliens, all of which seemed to be in either Siberia or Brazil. He flipped through another file. All of these clippings were about women who had had children fathered by space aliens. The fourth and last file had a variety of articles, all related to UFOs and/or aliens in some way: cattle mutilations alleged to be the work of aliens, UFO bases discovered on the moon, messages sent through space from dying planets and just now picked up by alert scientists on Earth.

Sam opened the lower file drawer. It was empty.

He looked again through the clippings. Some had phrases underlined in red ink. The phrase "blue light" or "blue beam" was underlined in several different articles. Another place, the phrase "spherical craft" was underlined.

Sam wondered if Agent Wylie had -- or thought he had -- encountered UFOs or space beings himself, to give him such an interest in the subject. Would it, Sam wondered, hurt Wylie's career if his superiors at the FSA learned about his interest in such "weird" subject matter?

Agent Wylie's kitchenette looked as bare and spotless as a motel kitchenette, but Sam found some frozen entrees in the freezer and put one in the microwave to cook.

While it rotated, he sat down in front of the television and picked up the TV schedule. Wylie had underlined the shows he was interested in -- LOST IN SPACE, VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA, BULLWINKLE, THE ADDAMS FAMILY. Sam smiled. He liked Wylie's taste in television; obviously, Wylie used television to escape from the pressures of his job, and, in spite of the seriousness and highly developed intelligence which, as an FSA agent, Wylie had to have, he wasn't afraid to let the child in him come out at home.

Sam, however, thought that a NOVA episode about subatomic particle accelerators sounded more interesting. Nothing like quarks and positrons to liven up an evening.

Sam removed Wylie's three-piece suit and put on a pair of his striped pajamas, extracted his now-steaming dinner from the microwave, and settled down to an evening of exploring his favorite alien world, the subatomic realm.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sam spent a fitful night dreaming that he was a neutron being pursued by alien neutrons from other atoms. Ever since he had begun leaping, it seemed that he never had peaceful dreams about ordinary things anymore. As he shaved the unfamiliar face he saw in the mirror, he noticed dark circles under Wylie's eyes.

"Sam," Al's voice boomed from behind him, "I have bad news."

"Al! Don't sneak up on me like that when I'm shaving! It's hard enough to shave when the face in the mirror doesn't match the face I'm wearing. Look, I've cut myself. Can't you even wait till after I've had coffee to give me bad news?"

"Sam, Ziggy says that Forrester died eight days after his capture. This is the third day since he's been captured. Counting today, you have only six days to help him get out of there."

"Okay, Al, just what am I supposed to do? Ask Ziggy. What the blazes can I do?"

"Watch the profanity, Sam. You know Ziggy can't tell you that." Al looked at Sam reproachfully. "All I'm doing is giving you the information. According to Ziggy's information, time is short. Would you _rather_ I withheld the information from you?"

"No, no, Al, of course not. Well, what did Forrester die of? Was it from those experimental drugs?"

"It doesn't seem so. Seems like the autopsy could find nothing at all. According to what's in the computer records, there was no sign of any problem. His heart was beating fine, his breathing, everything fine. And then suddenly" -- Al snapped his fingers -- "gone." He sighed. "The cause remains a mystery. In fact, it seems they did an incredibly detailed, minute autopsy on Forrester's body, examining tissues from all his organs with electron microscopes, doing every chemical test anyone could think of. But nothing. They never figured out why he dies, just like that."

"It is getting to be quite a mystery, Al," Sam said. "They seem unusually interested in his physiology. I thought at first that all those electrodes and monitors were to keep track of his reactions to the experimental drugs, while they interrogated him. But... I don't know, it sure doesn't seem like that's all there is to it."

"You're telling me, Sam. It wasn't just after he was dead that they started this minute examination of his tissues. Do you know that when they shaved his head, they didn't throw the hair away, but sent it to a special lab to be analyzed?"

"What were they expecting to find? Exposure to heavy metals, chemicals and stuff?"

"They were examining the cellular structure," Al said.

"The _cellular_ structure? Of his _hair_??" Sam echoed incredulously. "Whatever on Earth were they looking for?"

Al studied Ziggy's screen more intently. "Seems like that they thought he could control his own rate of hair growth, and they'd see that in the shape of the cells or something. Yeah, I know, that sounds weird, I could be interpreting this wrong. Anyway, they did find some unusual things."

"Like what?"

"Dunno, Sam, you'd have to ask a biologist what all this technical stuff means. Maybe with your medical background you could understand it, but..."

Sam was silent for a long moment. Then he asked, "Did they ever capture the boy?"

"No -- according to Ziggy, the boy just disappeared from sight. Can't say as I blame him. Probably changed his name, living incognito somewhere, maybe left the country."

"And the woman, Liz Baines?"

"Still living in Chicago."

Again, Sam pondered for a while. "Al," he said, "why can't I ever get an easy one?"

"Probably because you're good, and Somebody knows it. See ya, Sam." Al stepped through the imaging chamber "door" and disappeared.

Sam counted out the cash in his wallet. There was enough to take a cab to work, and maybe enough to get along on for a few days if he could figure out which car was Wylie's and quit spending money on cabs. He could ask Al to have Ziggy access the DMV records. At least _that_ was an easy one.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The guards at the entrance to FSA headquarters waved Sam through. At the door to Forrester's room, Sam pressed 5-18-19-8-7 as though he had done it hundreds of times. The door code hadn't been changed, and the door immediately opened.

Sam walked in and found Forrester in a hospital bed. At least they had given him something more comfortable than a gurney to sleep on. A young uniformed guard drowsed in a chair next to the bed.

Forrester's eyes lit up when he caught sight of Sam. "Good morning!" he said cheerfully, with a weak but genuine smile.

"Good morning, Forrester," Sam said.

"It's so good to see you, Agent Wylie," said Forrester, his eyes twinkling as though sharing a secret.

"Forrester," Sam said, and then stopped. Nothing he wanted to ask made any sense. Not to mention how weird it would sound to those listening...

Ah, the heck with it, time was running out; Sam threw caution to the winds. "Forrester... I have information that you, um, die six days from, now, and nobody is ever able to determine the cause. Forrester, are you dying of something now? Or are you planning to commit suicide rather than tell them what they want to know? Are your secrets really worth dying for?"

"I don't know any secrets," Forrester said, not even seeming surprised at Sam's statements about his dying. "I just don't know how to explain things in ways they would understand. I don't think they even really want to understand."

Our troubles aren't so different, thought Sam. "But are you dying? Please," he said, meaning it, "please don't die." Sam didn't know how or why, but somehow he felt that the world would be losing something very important, something very special, something genuinely unique, if it lost this man.

"I don't want to die," said Forrester. "I like it here. I feel more and more like I'm a part of life here. I have come to love the sensation of taking breath into my lungs. I love to feel the blood pulsing through my body. I love the sensation of light falling on my eyes, and the way my brain can turn sounds falling upon my ears into meaning. But -- there is no reason for me to continue life like this. The only reason that I am here is to be with my son. If I can't be with him -- if this body is going to be kept here -- there is no reason for me to stay with it. If I leave this body, I will still be able to be with my son again, even if it is in a different way."

He smiled at Sam, a smile that seemed to touch Sam at a very deep level with its simplicity and peace. "But, thank you, my friend. Thank you so much for coming to be with me."

Sam was silent. Suddenly, Fox burst into the room. "The subject needs to be exercised," he commanded the security guard. "Take him down to the gym for thirty minutes. Make sure his pulse rate reaches at least 120 for at least ten minutes, and then have him drink a liter of distilled water afterward. When he comes back, he'll have breakfast. He'll have at least 30 grams of protein in the morning, and another 30 grams during his evening meal, plus complex carbohydrates and enhanced levels of vitamin C and B vitamins and potassium and magnesium, a total of 3200 calories daily. Dr. Rios has designed a regimen to keep the subject in perfect health," Fox told Sam proudly. "We'll have him for years and years."

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Fox says that Dr. Rios plans the first use of the experimental drug, ABCTV, in three days, and then to give him increasing doses at approximately three-day intervals thereafter," Sam said to Al as he walked through a park under a beautiful May sky. His boss had ordered him to take an hour break for unexplained reasons. "Fox is supposed to interrogate Forrester for five minutes at the first session, ten minutes the second session, fifteen minutes the third, and so forth. Supposedly, that will minimize the stress on the `subject,' according to the great Dr. Rios."

"Well, they aren't even gonna have him that long," Al replied. "Three days from now is six days after the capture, and according to Ziggy, that'll be the only session they'll ever have."

"I know," said Sam, discouraged. He slumped down onto a park bench and lapsed into silence. A few yards in front of him, a trio of laughing children were playing Frisbee.

"Sam, doesn't it seem odd that they always refer to Forrester as the `subject' rather than as the `suspect' or the `prisoner' or the `informant' or something like that?"

"Yes, it sure does. And sometimes Fox calls Forrester `it.'" Sam shuddered. A black Labrador had appeared seemingly from nowhere to join the children's Frisbee game. The children squealed with delight as they tried to beat the Labrador to the sailing Frisbee.

"I've heard that, too. Gives me the creeps. I'm thinking more and more, Sam, that this sounds more like they're doing a scientific experiment than trying to investigate something criminal or subversive."

"I'm thinking the same thing," said Sam. "But what could it be? Surely, they wouldn't perform experiments on helpless, innocent people."

"Sam!" cried Al. "Yes, they have! The CIA and the military and other secret government agencies have performed experiments on innocent humans. Especially during the 1950s. Don't you remember when it came out how they gave unknowing subjects LSD and other psychoactive drugs? And what about the radiation experiments they did? Injecting people with plutonium. Feeding radioactive oatmeal to retarded kids in institutions. Deliberately releasing radioactivity from the Hanford Nuclear Plant in Washington state to the surrounding farm communities, to see the cancer patterns that developed. And those are just things we know about. Who knows what kind of experiments they did, maybe still do, that no one's ever found out about?" He was becoming more excited. "Maybe Forrester's not a criminal at all. Maybe he's the subject of some sort of ongoing experiment and now they are trying to find out the results."

"Well, Fox is trying to get some kind of information from him," said Sam. "He seems to be chomping at the bit to get at the interrogations, but he has to follow Dr. Rios's schedule. But, you know, when Forrester told me he didn't know any secrets -- Al, I believe him. He said that the only things he wasn't telling them were things he didn't know how to put into words they'd understand."

"Maybe they're interrogating him to find out the effects of the experiments. Maybe they want to ask him what happened at a certain time, what he felt as a result of some drug they administered, or something."

"Yeah," Sam said. "Those effects, things he felt and went through, might be just about impossible to put into words -- Forrester might have a hard time understanding the effects himself."

"Maybe he didn't even know they were performing an experiment on him, Al said. "Maybe these guys did something to Forrester before, like a drug or radioactivity thing, and what they are doing now, it's like some kind of follow-up, to find out the results."

"Maybe it's some kind of genetic experiment," said Sam. "That would explain their interest in his son."

"Yeah! And in his cellular structure, like his hair and stuff!"

"But he couldn't be a product of genetic engineering. He's, what, mid-30s? That puts his birth in, what, '52? There wasn't any bioengineering in those days."

"Yeah, but they were doing the radiation experiments on people back then. Radioactivity affects the genes, causes mutations. Maybe they couldn't create mutations to order, but they played around a lot with radioactivity. Played around with people's lives."

"And there are drugs that can cause mutations, too," said Sam.

"Oh, my God," said Al. "It might be something like in FIRESTARTER. Did you ever read that book? It's by Stephen King."

"I'm afraid I'm way behind in the literature of Stephen King," said Sam, a touch sarcastically. "What's the book about?"

"As I recall it, it was a long time ago I read it, the father of this girl, or maybe both parents, had been subjected to some kind of experiments with some kind of psychoactive drug while they were in college. The offspring of the parents subjected to this experiment were, I think, born with different kinds of special powers, like this little girl was born with the ability to start fires mentally. The whole book, the government's chasing the two of them, want to use the girl for their nefarious purposes."

"Just innocent people, being chased," mused Sam. "I don't know, that... that fits somehow. It's not just the way they treat him as the `subject' of their... whatever it is they're doing. It's that... Al, I've looked into Forrester's eyes, and I cannot imagine in any way that this man has done anything wrong."

"Me, too, Sam. That goes double for me."

"I wonder," said Sam with a touch of bitterness, "did Agent Wylie know what he was doing when he helped to capture Forrester? Is he one of those people who just follows orders blindly? Or did his conscience prick him -- did he consider that what he was doing might be wrong?"

"Who knows, Sam. The important thing is helping Forrester. Haven't you gone yet to talk to Scott Hayden and Liz Baines?"

"And just what do I say? Here I'm Agent Wylie, the man who helped to capture him. How am I supposed to get them to trust me? They could never believe that one person could be walking around with the appearance and identity of another."

"You'll figure out something. You always do." The portal appeared and Al disappeared into it, just as Sam was starting to say, "Hey, can you have Ziggy check the DMV records..."

Sam got up from the park bench. Slowly he walked from the park back to the featureless gray building that was FSA headquarters, and as he did, he mentally rehearsed his conversation with "Ishtar Warren":

"Hello?"

"Hello, Ms. Warren?"

"Yes?"

"I need to talk to you about something very important."

"What is it?"

"Well..."

"Who are you?"

That part of the conversation was always a stickler.

"I'm... a friend."

No, under the circumstances -- trying to protect a boy she knew to be hunted by the government -- she would probably be unconvinced by a mysterious stranger who would give no other identification than "a friend."

Try again.

"Hello?"

"Hello? My name is Sam Beckett. I need to talk to you about something important. Paul Forrester."

"Paul Forrester!" Her imagined voice came in gasps. "Do you know where he is? What condition is he in?"

"Yes, I know exactly where he is."

"Where?"

"At the FSA headquarters."

Her imagined voice turned sarcastic. "I assumed _that!_ Do you have anything more specific?"

"He's in a room in the subbasement. There's no number on the door."

"Well," even more sarcastic, "I am certainly glad that you phoned me. You've been _very_ helpful. Now, may I ask _you_ a question?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"How do you know this?"

"Ma'am?"

"Have you seen where he is being held, with your own eyes?"

"Ma'am? Why, yes, ma'am."

"Funny, I've had the impression that only FSA operatives are even allowed _in_ there. So, Mr. Beckett, how is it that you have recently witnessed what's going on deep in the bowels of the FSA? You don't happen to _work_ for the FSA, do you, by any chance?"

"Umm... I sort of do, but not exactly. I mean, it's not really me that works there. They think I'm somebody else."

"Well, that certainly clears things up!" said the voice in his mind. "SO! I suppose the next step is to arrange a meeting for us! I tell you, Mr. Beckett -- if that's really your name -- it's really a shame that our tax money pays for such incompetence. If you can't do better than _this_ at luring someone into a trap...."

No. Try it again.

"Hello?"

"Hello, may I speak with Liz Baines?"

"Who are you?"

"My name is Sam Beckett, and I know it sounds weird, but by a circumstance very difficult to explain I have found myself in the persona of FSA Agent Wylie, whom I am sure you know, and I've seen your friend Forrester, because they think I'm Wylie so they let me in to the FSA headquarters, and I have to get Forrester out of there in the next five days, and I have no idea how to do it, so you're my only hope."

No, probably not.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Ms. Baines?" No, make that "Hello, Ms. Warren?" No sense in alarming her prematurely.

"Yes, who is this?"

"I'm a friend of Paul Forrester's. I want to help him, but I don't know how. If we get together and talk about it, maybe we can come up with something."

"How did you know where to find me?"

"What?"

"How did you know where I was staying?"

"Um..." Forrester told me? No, he surely wouldn't know where they'd be.

"How did you know that I'm a friend of this Forrester character?"

"Well, I, um..." Forrester told me? But he wouldn't say he was a friend of Ishtar Warren's, would he? She surely wouldn't use a pseudonym that Forrester knew, because they might get it out of him during interrogation. Besides, then they got back to the problem of how he'd seen Forrester.

"Does the FSA have me under surveillance?"

And, of course, her next move would be to flee Washington. They wouldn't be here in the first place unless they thought their presence was secret -- at least that of the boy.

"Wylie!" Fox's voice broke into Sam's musings. Sam found himself under the harsh fluorescents of the office he shared with Fox. He had scarcely been aware of entering the FSA building.

"This morning we reviewed yesterday's videotapes of the subject," Fox said. Sam's heart skipped a beat. "Why didn't you tell us the subject had talked to you?"

"Well, um, sir, he didn't say anything important."

"Anything may be important. It isn't your job to judge that."

"Yes, sir."

"I admire your efforts to get it to talk, but you don't need to try to scare it by threatening it."

"Threatening...?"

"Telling the subject that it'd die in five days if it didn't cooperate. Your heart's in the right place, but Dr. Rios said that we shouldn't threaten or scare the subject; that that creates too much stress and can adversely affect its health. Nice try, though."

"Ah... thank you, sir."

"But if it shows any more inclination to talk to you, encourage it."

"Yes, sir."

"You don't need to _try ___to get information out of it, but be sure to pay attention if it _does_ say something."

"Yes, sir."

"If you can gain its trust..."

"I should act as though I'm on his side."

"Yes, if you can. If the subject believes you're on its side you might be able to get information from it."

"Good cop/bad cop," said Sam.

Excitement seemed to churn within Fox. "If we could catch the boy based on information you got, I'd recommend you for a promotion. And you'd get it, for sure."

If there's one thing I'm NOT going to do, thought Sam, it will be to let Forrester let slip any information he shouldn't. But by _pretending_ to try to get information from Forrester, he might be able to talk to Forrester more freely without arousing suspicion. "So I can say _anything_ to him?"

"Well -- whatever works."

Sam suddenly realized that this could be an opportunity to get some clues to the mystery of Forrester's case. "Sir," he asked, "what are the most important pieces of information to get out of him?"

"Oh." Fox seemed to tremble with excitement at the thought of what might be coming within his grasp. "Other than the whereabouts of the boy? I think... the most important questions... Hmm, the first priority would have to be finding out how many more there are like it, and how many offspring they have seeded. How many more of them are there out there."

"You mean... genetically like him," Sam hazarded.

"I -- guess you could put it that way. You must have been talking to Dr. Rios about her plans to bring in a team of molecular biologists to study its genetics? She thinks there may be some... I don't remember the terms she used... something that may happen to genes when they're cloned, that can help us to positively identify others like him."

Cloned??! Sam was feeling sick to his stomach. Others like him?

"Of course, in Forrester's case, there are more obvious physiological differences than that, due to the acceleration of the growth process. Dr. Rios wants to take bone samples, get them analyzed by a bone expert -- I forget what they're called -- because, she says, they couldn't be like natural bones that developed over years and years. The way the body laid down calcium is very different. That's not exactly how she said it -- you know how she uses a lot of technical terms -- but that's what it comes down to."

Fox was saying more, but Sam's mind was attempting to grapple with what he had just heard. Cloned. Acceleration of the growth process...

"...so you can keep watch on Forrester until one o'clock." Sam suddenly became aware that Fox was speaking.

"What, sir?"

"Dr. Rios scheduled you to watch Forrester during the noon hour. She says that your presence produced a relaxation response in the subject. She said there was an expansion in the pupils of his eyes when you entered." Fox had a slightly sarcastic tone that suggested that he wouldn't waste time looking at a prisoner's pupils. "And, like I said before, maybe he'll say something to you. If you could get us any clues as to the whereabouts of the boy..."

"I'm not sure I can promise _that_ , but..."

"Just do your best. Well, it's five to twelve. Let's go on to Forrester's suite."

A moment later, Sam found himself alone -- but for four video cameras -- looking down at the closed eyes and motionless figure of the prisoner.

"Hello, Mr. Forrester," Sam said softly.

For a few seconds, there was no response. Then Forrester opened his eyes. A smile came to his face. "Hello, Agent Wylie," he said with genuine happiness. "Hello, my friend."

"They've left me in here for an hour," Sam said.

Forrester glanced toward the wall clock to his left. "Then that's till one o'clock," he said.

"Yes," Sam said.

"One o'clock in the afternoon," Forrester said. "Not one o'clock in the morning."

"Yes," Sam said. He suddenly felt how disorienting it must be to be shut up in a windowless room for days at a time... and drugged for much of those days.

"So!" Forrester said cheerfully. "They've gone to eat lunch, and left you here."

"Yes," Sam said.

"And you aren't hungry?"

Hungry? Sam had hardly even thought about being hungry. "Not really," he said.

"Do you eat here -- do they have a cafeteria here?"

Sam suddenly realized that there was no sign around of any lunch for Forrester. "Are you hungry?" he asked.

"No, not really, they gave me something just before you came in."

"What was it?"

"I don't know... some kind of brown cakey stuff, and then a very thick drink."

"I think Dr. Rios has designed a strict nutritional regimen for you."

"I think so," Forrester replied. "Do they serve pizza up in the cafeteria?"

Sam tried to picture the cafeteria's selection -- he had been sent there that morning when Fox had forgotten to plug in his office coffeemaker -- but his mental image wasn't very detailed. "Maybe they do, but nothing in that cafeteria is very good," he said.

"Are you coming to watch me during lunch hour tomorrow?"

"I think I may be."

"Do you think you could smuggle in a cheeseburger?"

Sam laughed. "I don't think I could keep it much of a secret. And I don't think Dr. Rios would like it."

"You can say I offered to tell you some secrets in return for the cheeseburger," Forrester said with a twinkle in his eye. "Then if they convicted you for smuggling, I bet Fox would get your sentence commuted."

Sam laughed. "But what if you didn't tell me any secrets?"

Forrester thought. "I could tell you some."

Sam hesitated, wondering if he should let Forrester go any further.

"I'll tell you one of my secrets right now, if you'll promise to bring the cheeseburger tomorrow. I'll tell you a secret I have never even told my son."

Sam cast a glance toward one of the video cameras. "Ah..."

"Well," said Forrester, not waiting for the promise, "my socks don't match. I don't have a single pair of matching socks left, and I've been going around in mismatching socks for months now. That's something even Scott doesn't know."

Sam giggled. Then he looked into Forrester's eyes. He realized, admiringly, that Forrester had been concerned about Sam's feelings and trying to set him at ease. Sam struggled for words. "I wish..." he said. "I wish we could have met under different circumstances."

"But you're here with me now," Forrester said, "and now is when I really _need_ a friend. I am so glad you have come to be with me now -- you and your friend."

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Fifteen years I've been on this case. Fifteen years I practically never thought of anything else."

Fox's voice startled Sam. Sam had almost forgotten that he was not alone in the silence of the small office that Fox and Wylie shared. When Fox had entered the office -- sent out of Forrester's room by Rios and her technicians, while they did who-knows-what to the `subject' -- he had sunk silently into the chair next to his desk, and stared expressionlessly out the window, not even acknowledging Sam's presence. As the minutes went by, Sam, lost in thought himself, had nearly forgotten that Fox was there.

"Fifteen years..." Fox said softly, at last. "And now... it's over."

"Yes, sir."

"We'll never have a more important case than this one. And then, having to sit and just wait and wait and do nothing. We could be out there right now, on the boy's track, interrogating witnesses." Fox's voice trailed off, and he focused for a few silent minutes on doodling -- jerky little zigzags that looked like the readings on Forrester's monitors. "But they won't let us. They have to do everything `scientifically' nowadays."

Long minutes passed. Fox's doodles dug deeper and deeper into the paper. Sam wondered if he was leaving gouge-marks on the desk.

"It's all computers now. They're going to strip every clue from Forrester's brain about the boy's habits and thinking processes and put every speck of data into a computer. Then they'll send an army of agents in a computer-coordinated sweep. A net he can't escape."

But he does escape, Sam thought with secret satisfaction. Ziggy's already said that they never find the boy.

"Rios takes forever to get anything done. Data, data, data, recording every little brain wave and waiting forever to get to the important things." Fox had abandoned his doodling, and was now occupied with unbending paper clips.

"Well, the important thing is _getting_ the information, not _who_ gets it, isn't it, sir?" Sam said, knowing that his words were touching a nerve.

Fox was silent for a moment. I m sure Dr. Rios is very qualified to oversee the investigation. He picked up one of his straightened paper clips and began to stab holes into a piece of paper.

"Confidentially, Wylie," Fox added after a long pause -- how confidential _could_ anything be here, thought Sam -- "I think Rios is a little _over_ cautious, if you ask me. She acts as though Forrester's made of glass."

"I'm sure she knows exactly what she s doing," Sam said with secret maliciousness.

"I did a lot of field interrogations, especially during the year we were hunting for Forrester, but it's been so long since I've... I... guess I didn't realize the advances that have been made in interrogation techniques." Fox crunched up the perforated piece of paper and pushed it off the desk toward a wastebasket. The ball of paper hit the rim of the wastebasket and bounced noiselessly onto the carpet near Fox s foot. "It's become a science, now, I guess."

"So that's why they had to get a scientist to oversee the interrogation," said Sam, taking concealed pleasure in needling Fox.

"Wylie, do you know how to play double solitaire?" Fox said, looking up suddenly.

"What, sir?"

"Do you know how to play double solitaire? I could teach you. It's easy. Do you want to come down and play cards with me in the cafeteria this afternoon?"

"Well, ah, sir, I was planning to work crossword puzzles. In the paper."

"I could help you with them," Fox said hopefully. "I'm good at crossword puzzles. I used to buy crossword puzzle books by the stack when I had to do stakeouts."

"Well, sir, it's more, ah, fun to solve crosswords without help."

"You like a challenge, don't you, Wylie? So do I. We're two of a kind, aren’t we? Neither one of us is built to stay behind a desk. We need to be out there. Out on the front lines. Out in the battle."

"I suppose so, sir."

"We're men of action, aren't we, Wylie? We need to _do_ things! The home office boys just could never understand us field agents."

"No, sir, probably not," Sam said sullenly.

"We've been through a lot together, haven't we, Wylie?" Fox said after another long pause.

"I suppose so, sir."

"How long have we been together?"

"Ah, well, sir, I'd have to figure that out..."

"Six years," came Al's voice behind them.

"Six years, isn't it, sir?" Sam said to Fox.

"Yes, I think so, Wylie. Seems a lot longer. You've been with me longer than any other assistant."

"Yes, sir."

"About five and a half years longer than the second-longest," Fox said. He stared past Sam, at the gray walls with the faint cracks in the paint. "I know I've been impatient with you at times..."

"That's all right, sir."

"But you came through in the end. You were the one who did it. If not for you, Forrester would have escaped over that interstate bridge."

"Yes, sir," said Sam, with a touch of bitterness.

"You're the closest thing I have to a friend, Wylie."

"Ah... thank you, sir."

"It's like we're war buddies, isn't it?"

"War buddies, sir?"

"Gimme a break," came Al's voice behind them. "You don't know what it's like to be in the jungle, shooting at invisible enemies, seeing your buddies' guts splatter next to you..."

"Yes," Fox mused, stacking his straightened-out paper clips into a little pile, "it took a long time. A lot of blood, toil, sweat, tears, headaches, and budget cuts. But it's finally over. We finally caught it."

"Yes, sir."

"That's the important thing," Fox sighed, kicking at the paper ball near his foot without much conviction, "we caught it."

"Sir, may I ask you a question?"

"Yes?"

"Sir, why do you refer to Forrester as `it'?"

"Well, Wylie, we don't actually know its real gender, do we?"

"Well, sir, if it comes to that, we don't actually know _your_ real gender, do we?"

"What?"

" _You_ have male secondary sexual characteristics -- but so does Forrester. And, granted, that is not absolute proof of an individual's sex. Extremely high levels of estrogen or testosterone in a male or female, respectively, can give a male female secondary sexual characteristics, such as breasts, or a female male secondary characteristics, such as a beard." Sam noticed Fox staring at him in a very peculiar way, but he continued. "Nevertheless, we generally accept one another's secondary sexual characteristics as prima facie evidence of sex."

Fox was still staring. "Where did you get all that, Wylie? One of your tabloids?"

"I'm only asking, sir, why do you call Forrester an `it'? Is it something about his genetics? Is he not genetically male -- does he not have x and y chromosomes?"

"I suppose he does." Fox shrugged. "I guess he'd have to. The real Forrester was a male. This one's got to have the same genes." Fox sighed. "I guess the main reason I call Forrester `it' is to combat people's infuriating tendency to sentimentalize the thing -- to think of it as though it were a human being. You know how many times people helped it get away because of that. And I've had to discipline myself not to get sentimental, too. But I guess it doesn't matter now, now that we've got Forrester. Even Dr. Rios calls Forrester `him,' and you know _that_ lady is no sentimentalist." Fox fell silent for a moment. Then he said, "You know, Wylie, you sound... smarter, or something."

"Night school," said Sam absently.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Did you hear what he said?!" Sam said to Al, as he drove Wylie's Volkswagen home that evening. His mind was still reeling from the shock of Fox's casual statement. "`The real Forrester was a male. This one's got to have the same genes.'"

"Cloning. He's talking about cloning."

"But this is the eighties, Al. There wasn't the technology for this stuff then. The first major breakthroughs in human cloning came about in the mid-nineties, remember?"

"Well -- evidently somebody _did_ know how."

"Remember those stories they used to tell about cloning factories in Russia? I always dismissed that as a fantasy. But now..."

"You think that Forrester was cloned in the Soviet Union?"

"I didn't mean that," said Sam. "I meant the whole idea that people were being duplicated somewhere. Anywhere."

"The Cold War was still going on in 1987. A photojournalist can go a lot of places and record a lot of things. The perfect occupation for a spy."

"Well, if he was made by `the other side,' that would explain why they are studying him so closely. They probably figure that our side's technology had better catch up or else."

"Maybe that's why Fox considers him a threat to our way of life."

"And that's why he talked about finding the others who are like him. The other clones. The other spies."

"Yeah, well, the FSA's mainly in the national security business – spy catching," said Al. "They wouldn't be doing anything for purely scientific inquiry."

"Fox doesn't even consider Forrester a human being. Did you hear him? `The thing.' `People sentimentalize the thing as though it were human.' All right, maybe Forrester is genetically engineered. But he's still human. He's not a thing." Sam was feeling more and more outraged.

"And even if he was _created_ for spying purposes," Al said, "I can't see Forrester as any kind of spy. The guy is just too darn innocent, too guileless. He doesn't have a spy temperament."

"Whoever made him might know how to make a human, but they don't know how to create a spy."

"Humans are made by fools like I, but only God can make a spy," Al mused. "At least, they didn't know how when Forrester was created. How long ago you figure that was?"

"I don't know. Sometimes I get the impression he hasn't been here very long -- that the whole world is new to him, that even having a body is new to him. And then other times I look in his eyes and get the feeling that he's been alive far longer than we have, that he's seen much more than we ever will see."

"He seems so innocent, like a little kid. I don't think he's been here too long."

"That's probably why he could see you -- why he even saw _me_ as myself and not as Wylie. The only people who have ever seen me as I really am, and not as the person I've leaped into, are little kids."

"And mental patients," said Al.

"And Ziggy has said that my purpose here is to free Forrester. That wouldn't be my assignment unless Forrester _deserved_ to be free, would it?"

"But _how_ to free him? There are only five days left."

"There's got to be a way that we can take advantage of the fact that he can see you, and the rest of them can't. You can ask him questions that I can't ask him, questions that won't give anything away to them. Yes or no questions. He might seem to be answering thin air, they might think he's nuts, but they won't get any information."

"Right," said Al. "And I can tell him what our plan is. If we can come up with one."

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Dr. Rios wants you to continue your noon watches with Forrester. Says it relaxes him," Fox said, leading Sam to Forrester's door. "Like the purpose of an interrogation is to _relax_ a subject, right?" Fox added in a sarcastic undertone.

Then he stood close to Sam and slipped a white paper bag into Sam's hands. "You got him talking, keep it up," Fox said in a low voice. He clicked open the lock and all but pushed Sam into Forrester's room, then said loudly: "Okay, Wylie, we'll see you at one!"

The door boomed shut.

Sam looked at the white paper bag. He reached in and extracted its contents. A large Styrofoam shell. He opened the shell. Inside was a steaming double cheeseburger.

"I guess this is for you," Sam said to Forrester. Forrester reached out with a look of delight, and Sam noticed today his right hand had no restraints on it. Give thanks for small blessings. "I guess Fox expects you to pay for this with more secrets," Sam said, smiling.

" _Fox_ sent this?" Forrester said, surprised. He smiled back. "Well, I guess I'll have to think of something."

"Forget Fox. We gotta think of a way to get you outta here," came Al's voice as he seemed to enter through the wall.

"Al!" said Sam. "You made it!"

"Sam," said Al, gesturing toward the video cameras, "let me do the talking here. Forrester, you can see and hear me, and the rest of them can't. So, Forrester, I'll talk, and you just answer yes or no, or other short phrases that won't make any sense to the FSA. They'll maybe think you're nuts, but that can't make things any worse. Together we can figure out some kind of plan to get you out of here. Okay?"

"Okay," said Forrester. He met Sam's eyes and smiled conspiratorially.

"Well, first," Al said, "we have to get things straight. I don't know how to ask this question -- never had to ask anybody this before -- I'll just ask it --" Al took a deep breath, "are you a clone?"

Forrester seemed to hesitate for a fraction of a second, maybe even to wince, but he replied, "Yes."

"I knew it! I _knew_ it!" cried Al. "It's all true, then! Sam, it's all true!"

"Well..." said Sam uncomfortably, looking toward his shoes.

"Could I ask _you_ something?" asked Forrester to Al.

"Yes, of course," said Al.

"Who _are_ you?"

"I guess we need to introduce ourselves!" Al said enthusiastically. Then his face turned serious. "It's... it's a little hard to explain... and to believe."

Forrester smiled broadly. "Sometimes I've had that very problem myself -- having to explain things that are hard to believe."

"I guess you would," said Al. "Your origin would be pretty hard to believe."

Forrester nodded, with the trace of a smile.

"Well..." Al continued, "take it or leave it. Remember, you asked. But, the important thing isn't whether you believe it; the important thing is figuring out how to get you out of here. So, even if what I tell you sounds crazy..."

Forrester looked expectant.

Al took a deep breath and plunged in. "We're from the future."

Forrester's eyes widened. "Really!" he said.

"Yes, really," said Sam.

"Just a few years in your future, but Sam here -- that's his real name, Sam Beckett-- `leaps' into different years, into the identity of different people."

Forrester seemed to be absorbing this information with fascination, but no great difficulty. "And... what about you?" he asked Al.

"I'm still _in_ the future," said Al. "It's hard for me to explain, Sam's the physicist -- maybe he can explain to you, without giving away anything important." He gestured at the video cameras.

"Well, in non-technical terms," said Sam, "it's based on what I called the `string theory of time.' That's my theory that all time coexists, and it bends back on itself like a tangled string, and you can `leap' from one point on the string to another point that it was touching so to speak."

Forrester considered. "I once tried to explain time to my son by comparing it to a book, a story. When you have finished reading a chapter, the chapter doesn't cease to exist. The whole story exists at one time, even though while you are reading it the chapters you have already read are the `past' and the chapters you have yet to read are the `future.' And our stories are alive, always being revised. If an earlier chapter gets revised, the later chapters have to be revised in order to stay consistent. The past, I told him, is just as alive as the future."

Sam was speechless. He had imagined a wide range of possible reactions from Forrester, but he had never considered that Forrester might grasp and even explicate his leaping so well.

"We'd better get down to business," said Al. "We have to figure out how to get you out of here. We figure the best bet to start would be to talk to Scott Hayden and Liz Baines. They're here in D.C. right now."

Forrester started violently, the first time Sam had seen him lose his composure. "WHAT? He came here? Oh, no."

"Careful!" Al said sternly, waving around at the video cameras. "You want to let these guys know your friends are here?"

Forrester shook his head slowly.

"The problem is," Al said, "they aren't likely to want to talk to Sam."

"Why not?"

"Because," Al said, with a trace of impatience at Forrester's denseness, "Sam looks like Wylie to just about everybody except you and me. Your son is not going to talk to someone who looks like an FSA agent, is he?"

"Well," Forrester rubbed his face with his unsecured hand, "just explain to him."

"EXPLAIN to him??!" Sam burst out.

"Explain to him that Sam isn't Wylie??" Al echoed. "How is he going to believe something like that?"

"He might," Forrester said. "You don't really seem like Wylie."

"But..." Al's voice died.

"Wait, Al," said Sam, "he's saying that his..." glancing at the cameras, "that he knows it's possible for a person to look like..."

"What you're saying is," said Al, "your son already _knows_ that one person _can_ look just like another one."

Forrester chuckled. "It's not a totally new concept to him," he said. "He had a hard time at first accepting who I was, and who _he_ was. But now he understands. He understands a _lot_ of things that most people wouldn't."

Al looked toward Sam. "Well, it could be worth a try," he said doubtfully.

Sam looked at the clock. "It's six minutes to one," he said.

"I hope you can visit me tomorrow," said Forrester.

"I hope so too," said Sam.

Forrester glanced sidewise at one of the video cameras. "I hope that _both_ of you can visit me tomorrow," he said clearly and emphatically, with a twinkle in his eye. "Thank you _both_ for being my friends."

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Well, Sam, we've made progress," said Al, studying Ziggy's screen intently as he sat next to Sam in the passenger seat of Wylie's blue Volkswagen beetle. "According to what Ziggy says _now_ , Forrester doesn't buy the farm for four more weeks."

"I guess our conversation gave him hope," Sam reflected as he drove toward Wylie's apartment. "Gives us hope, too. We have more time..." "And maybe after we talk to the boy..."

"What about the boy?" Sam said after a reflective pause. "Is he really Forrester's son? Could Forrester have been around long enough to father a fourteen-year-old kid?"

"Maybe the kid's not really fourteen," said Al. "Maybe Forrester fathered him, and maybe the kid had the same kind of accelerated growth as Forrester. Maybe Forrester carries genes for accelerated growth. The kid could look fourteen in --" Al shrugged, "-- a year, who knows."

"But didn't you tell me Ziggy had found birth records for him? In 1972, or thereabouts?"

"That doesn't mean anything," said Al. "He might be using birth records of somebody else, someone born in 1972 who died as a baby. People do that when they want to establish new identities. But, it's true Forrester's not mentioned on his birth certificate. Says his father was a Scott Hayden, senior. Lemme find out what Ziggy's got on Scott Hayden, senior."

"Fox talks about having been on the trail fifteen years, and then he talks about searching for Forrester for only one year. It sounds as though there may have been more than one clone he was after."

"Maybe the _boy_ was the original clone, started fifteen years ago, and maybe he _is_ the age he looks. Maybe it was only later that whoever it was developed the technology for accelerating growth. Maybe he's actually been on this planet a lot longer than Forrester."

"But, then, why even bother cloning someone, for spy reasons, I mean, if they are just going to grow at the normal rate? You might as well just get a regular baby and raise it. A clone couldn't replace or impersonate someone if it didn't appear to be the same age as the original," said Sam.

"Well," said Al, "do you remember what Forrester said? `He had a hard enough time at first accepting who I was, and who _he_ was.'"

"You mean you think the boy possibly didn't know himself he was a clone until recently?"

"Well, the technology for regular cloning would have to be developed _before_ the technology for accelerating growth, wouldn't it? Possibly the boy was created first, not to impersonate anybody, just as an experiment to see it was possible. Then he would have grown up according to the normal human timeline, and might not have realized there was anything unusual about his origins until Forrester came along. And then they both figured out what was going on, and escaped."

"And then they're on the run together, and start saying they are father and son as a cover?" Sam said.

"And maybe even start thinking that way. There is nothing like shared danger to create a bond," said Al. "Like in combat... Hey, Sam, Ziggy's got something. Says here... says here that Scott Hayden, Senior, died in October 1971. October '71, Sam," Al repeated with slow emphasis. "The boy Scott Hayden, Junior, was born in December '72 – over _fourteen_ months later."

"So he couldn't have been fathered by who it says on his birth certificate."

"Or maybe he _could_ , Sam. Maybe not fathered -- maybe he was _cloned_ from Scott Hayden, senior."

Sam was starting to feel sick to his stomach again. "All this manipulation, experimentation on human beings. Like they're not even people. I don't blame Forrester and the kid for being on the run. I just hope they can get some place safe once we _do_ get Forrester out of there."

"Sam, I'm going to have Ziggy check some other records. Maybe she'll be able to find something on Fox. Reports he's submitted, stuff like that."

"Yeah, Al, good idea."

Al's portal appeared. He stood up to go through it, his head and shoulders passing through the top of the car. Sam watched the headless Al disappear.

He pondered as he drove, decided that he might as well try to contact Scott Hayden now. He headed to the Bald Eagle Hotel, parked across the street from it, entered a telephone booth across the street from the hotel, dialed the hotel's number, and asked for the room where Roger Esposito was registered.

After a couple of rings, a woman's voice said, "Hello?"

"Hello, could I speak with Roger Esposito?"

"Who is this?" the woman asked with surprise and undisguised suspicion.

"My name is Sam Beckett."

"Roger's not here. Could I give him a message?"

"I need to talk to him personally."

"What about?"

"It's personal." Although Liz Baines was an ally, Sam was doubtful that she would accept his story. According to Forrester, the boy might believe him; after all, wasn't he a clone himself? But Sam didn't know how much this Liz Baines knew.

"It is extremely important. A matter of life and death, in fact. I understand your need for security. But it is very important that I speak with him."

After a moment, a young man's suspicious voice said, "Hello?"

"Hello, my name is Sam Beckett, and what I have to say would be too fantastic for most people to believe, but your father told me you _might_ accept this as the truth. You see -- "

"My father! Who -- what -- are you talking about?"

"Well, I have been able to speak with your father --"

"You must have me confused with another Roger Esposito. I don't have a father, he died years ago."

"I'm talking about --" Sam took a deep breath, " -- Paul Forrester. Now, wait, don't hang up, if I were the FSA after you, wouldn't I just get a bunch of men and storm your room? This is a matter of life and death for Mr. Forrester. I have had access to see him and talk to him."

"How?" The suspicion in the young man's voice was mixing with hopefulness.

"It sounds strange but... they think I'm Agent Wylie."

"What??!"

"You know how your father looks like Paul Forrester, and people think he's the real Paul Forrester?"

"Yes..."

"Well... you know... kind of like that." Of course it was misleading for Sam to imply that he was a clone like them, but it would be easier for the boy to believe and understand than if Sam had said he had leapt in from the future. "Your father said you would understand. As strange as it sounds."

"You duplicated Wylie's body?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"You came from the same place that he did?"

The same place? Sam had no idea. Were the labs Forrester had been cloned in located in the FSA building? Sam didn't know, but that was where he himself had leapt in, so in a manner of speaking he had "come" from there. "Uh... you could say that."

"I can't believe it. This is amazing," the boy said.

"I'm in a phone booth across from the front entrance of your hotel. I had to call you before you saw me because if you saw that I looked like Wylie, before I had a chance to explain, I don't think you would have listened to me."

"I can see the phone booth from my window here. Can you step out of the booth so I can get a better look?"

Sam obliged, stretching the metal phone cord to its limit, then stepped back inside the booth. "Did you see me?"

"Yes," the boy's voice said. Sam was afraid that this would be the hard part, the moment that the boy saw him as Wylie, but instead the boy sounded as though he had warmed up a bit. "You do look like Wylie, but somehow you don't exactly. There is something about you that's different." Evidently, Sam thought, the boy had a degree of Forrester's ability to see through Sam's "aura." "And you don't talk like Wylie at all."

Sam let go a deep sigh of relief.

"What's this all about?" came the woman's suspicious voice in the background.

"He came from the same place as my Dad, he duplicated Wylie's body, and he's here to help rescue him."

There was a flurry of agitated and unintelligible conversation in the background, apparently muffled by a hand over the receiver. Alarm and protest from the woman's voice alternated with excited verbalizations from the young man, and finally Sam heard reluctant acquiescence from the woman.

The young man came back on the line. "Liz says we should find a safe public place to meet. She suggested Waldo's Pizzeria right across the street from here."

"Great! Meet in an hour?"

"We can't do it now. We have another appointment to go to right now. How about tomorrow?"

"It'd have to be in the evening. How about six?"

As he hung up the phone and exited the booth, Sam was feeling light and optimistic for the first time on this leap. Whistling a tune he had heard on the FSA cafeteria Muzak that day, he hopped into Wylie's Volkswagen.

He picked up some groceries on the way to Wylie's apartment, and was in the middle of preparing a dish of lentils and brown rice when Al's portal suddenly lit up the room.

"Hi, Al! Guess what?"

"What?"

"I talked to Scott Hayden tonight. Got an appointment to meet with him and Baines tomorrow evening. You know what -- I told him I looked like Wylie and all, he even saw me, and it hardly seemed to faze him. Like Forrester said. Amazing."

"So you told him that you were a clone like him and Forrester?"

"I sort of implied it. He asked if I was from the same place as his father. Which I guess would mean the FSA labs."

"Yeah, well, great, Sam. I came to tell you that Ziggy's been tracking down stuff on George Fox. She's come up with some pretty interesting stuff."

"Yeah? Interesting like how?"

"The first thing she checked was the public record -- newspapers and so on. She found Agent George Fox of the FSA mentioned in a wire service article in March 1972. He told a reporter he'd been chasing an alien from outer space."

"Weird! So that's what he used to do before he started chasing clones?"

"Wait! Then Ziggy found a report he submitted at that time. You know, there are degrees of security classification in these agencies. The private reports are top secret, Ziggy can't get to them, but then there are also reports written to inform lower-level personnel and other security agencies what each one's up to, just in case somebody runs across some info that one agency or another looking for. These reports don't have as many specifics, they leave out the details that are classified, but you can find out a lot anyway."

"So what was Fox's report about? Did it have something to do with cloning?"

"Yes, Sam, it did." Al took a deep breath. "It was a report on extraterrestrial cloning technology."

It took a few seconds for the impact of this to reach Sam. " _Extraterrestrial_ cloning technology???!" he echoed, stupefied.

"Extraterrestrial cloning of human beings."

Sam's body sank into a chair. "That's... that's..."

"Any harder to believe than the idea that _Earth's_ biotechnology was more advanced in 1987 than it is in our time?" asked Al. "We can create clones to a limited degree, but we certainly can't accelerate growth the way it seems to have been done in Forrester's case. The report talks as though the existence of extraterrestrial cloning of humans were an established fact, something taken for granted among the intelligence agencies. But of course not revealed to the general public."

"You're saying..." Sam was still struggling, "... Forrester wasn't created by `our side' or `their side' -- he was created by _extraterrestrials??!_ "

"Apparently so, at least according to internal FSA reports. There are a bunch of internal memos in FSA records more or less backing up what Fox says. Of course, nowhere is Forrester mentioned by name. Specific cases are coded and the details are disguised. In this 1972 report, Fox frequently makes reference to a case in Wisconsin he investigated."

"What does it say?"

"Lots of stuff -- here, I'll read you some: `In the case of 617W' --that's the code for the Wisconsin case -- `a forensic investigation of the site where the clone was created revealed evidence that the DNA source utilized was a preserved lock of hair of the deceased prototype.' Plenty more -- the report runs about eighteen pages."

"So -- they're saying extraterrestrials are making clones of humans?" Sam said, dazed. "But _why?_ "

Al raised his eyebrows. "You've seen INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, haven't you? You gotta ask why extraterrestrials would create duplicates of humans? Here in this report, Part III, it talks about their possible reasons for their replacing humans with cloned duplicates. It's pretty scary to read, and to think about -- aliens populating the Earth with cloned replicas of us."

"So Fox was actually right all along...?" mused Sam. "It really is a case of national security... planetary security...?"

"I've been reading this report. It's scary stuff, Sam. Look here -- it doesn't mention Forrester by name, but here it talks about how they replaced a photojournalist with a cloned duplicate. It says a photojournalist was probably chosen because he could get access to a lot more strategic places than a file clerk. And to strategic people! World leaders, people like that. If he could get access to them, he might get access to some of their genetic material. And these aliens have the ability to accelerate growth of their clones so they appear the same age as the originals!" Al shuddered. "And we use to think the stories about _Russian_ cloning factories were scary! _Alien_ cloning factories -- whew!"

"Forrester may have been a creation of an extraterrestrial cloning factory," Sam said, "but I feel that he is totally innocent, personally. If they are out to take over the world by duplicating humans, I think that Forrester shows that it won't work. He has a totally human heart. He's just an innocent victim of those extraterrestrial experimenters. He deserves to live a life."

"You're right, Sam," said Al. "I've met Forrester myself. One look in those eyes, you know Fox is nuts to think he's a threat."

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Rios is furious at me," Fox told Sam the next morning. "I got called upstairs and yelled at but good. She says I ruined her whole thing with that cheeseburger." Fox seemed to be doing his best to look chastened, but Sam could detect a glint of satisfaction at accomplishing this small act of sabotage. "And," Fox continued, unable to hide his glee, "when she heard how he was babbling yesterday, like he was talking to some imaginary friends, she even tried to blame it on my cheeseburger. Said the chemicals in it must have _reacted_ with the stuff she'd given him. But nobody takes her seriously."

"So _you're_ not in trouble, Mr. Fox?"

"If Rios had any credibility left, I might be, but she hasn't the foggiest idea what's going on. Her predictions have gone kablooey! Personally," Fox said with a hint of triumph, "I think we might just be going back to the old-fashioned methods of interrogation."

Out of the frying pan, into the fire? thought Sam with dread.

"He's mine, he's mine," Fox chortled. "He's always been mine!"

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Scott had the quick, sharp alertness of a deer, which Sam found more natural than Forrester's equanimity in someone who has had to live on the run.

"You can't believe how frantic I've been," Scott said, as the waiter arrived at the table and set down a giant pizza. "I didn't know what we were going to do."

"More than once I had to stop him from running out and doing something foolish that would have gotten him captured, too," Liz said. "He's rather an impetuous-natured young man."

"This is amazing. I never thought of this happening in a million years. You come here from... wherever you came from, to help save my father. How'd you know he was in trouble? Did he communicate with you somehow, ask for help?"

"To tell the truth," Sam said, "I don't even know how I was brought here. The decision took place... somewhere else."

"And you cloned Wylie. Great choice!" Scott laughed. "You can get into the FSA building that way. Perfect!" He took a bite of pizza. "So," he asked between chews, "what happened to the real Wylie?"

"Um, well... he is in another realm of existence, you might say. What, ah, happened to the real Paul Forrester?"

"Well, he was already dead."

"And the real, um, Scott Hayden?"

Scott seemed uncomfortable at this question. "Well, the _original_ Scott Hayden, y'know, he was already dead too."

Of course -- Al had already told him that. Sam decided he should suppress his own curiosity and leave the questions to Liz and Scott.

"So, how long have you been here?" asked Liz.

"Just a few days."

"So you're dealing with a new, unfamiliar world," Liz mused. "Things must be so strange and confusing to you. I remember how confused Paul was when he first appeared."

"Yeah -- hey, is this your first introduction to pizza?" Scott asked between chews.

"Um, no, I've experienced pizza before."

"Waldo's is the greatest. Worth the trip to D.C."

"Teenagers and pizza," Liz sighed. "We've practically lived at this place since we got here . I tell Scott it's a good thing that Fox must not be a pizza aficionado, or he would have caught the two of them a long time ago."

"You can't imagine how frantic I was when they caught Dad," Scott said again. "When you see him, tell him I love him."

"I will," Sam promised. "Do you have a sphere?" Scott asked.

"A sphere?"

Scott handed Sam an object that looked like a silver marble. "What's this?" asked Sam.

"Don't you came from the same place as my dad? Don't you guys all have spheres?"

"Ah, no, not exactly the same place," said Sam. "Where I come from, um, we don't all have them."

"That doesn't matter, Scott," Liz interrupted. "Let's get to what's important. So, Mr. Beckett, do you know _exactly_ where in that building they're holding Paul?"

Did she think that she and Scott could storm the FSA building or something? "He's in the subbasement," Sam said, "third door from the right as you get off the elevator."

"And there's no chance they'll move him?"

"He's been in the same room since they brought him in."

"This is just the information we needed! We didn't know how we could possibly find out where he was being held. And suddenly here you are. You're a godsend."

"What are you planning to do?"

"Well, naturally the first thing we did when we got here was to call a lawyer. I knew this great lawyer named Susan Hsing, a dedicated defender of civil rights. She's who we had to go see yesterday evening. She says this is obviously a thousand percent illegal, violates the Fourth and Fifth and Sixth Amendment and what-all. She's ready to sue the buns off the FSA."

"Sue them?" Sam echoed.

"She's always known that they were a rogue bunch who had no respect for the constitution or civil rights. She's wanted to blow the lid off that outfit for years. But we couldn't even prove the FSA had Paul in the first place. Scott witnessed his capture, but the FSA just denies everything, so what could we do? We didn't even know where they were holding him. Susan kept telling us, `If only we had a credible witness to tell a judge under oath that Paul was in that building, and just exactly _where_ in the building he was, we could get a search warrant, and then...'"

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Twelve hours later, Forrester was standing on the pavement and blinking into the May sunshine, Agent Fox was being rushed to the hospital emergency room, and Susan Hsing was explaining to Liz, Scott, and Forrester how they could bring suit against the FSA for false imprisonment. They were getting into Susan's car to head for Waldo's for some celebratory pepperoni- pineapple pizza, all chattering at once, when Sam leaped.

THE END


End file.
